1. Technical Field
This invention relates to multi-purpose tools for use by waiters in the restaurant industry.
2. Background Art
Service providers, such as waiters in restaurants, have a multifarious function in providing efficient service to the customers of the restaurant, particularly at high end restaurants that focus on customer service. Besides serving the food, service providers may also open wine bottles, light candles, bring checks and other items a customer may want. In many restaurants, particularly those with a romantic ambience, the lights are dimmed making it difficult to see. Undoubtedly, the customer will seek out a service provider to provide any service to convenience the customer.
The business problem that currently exists is that service providers, for example, at restaurants, often do not have their tools readily available when they need them at the point-of-sale, and are thus forced to hunt, search, find, locate, obtain, and return to the point-of-sale with the acquired artifacts to complete the business transaction.
Therefore, it is important for the service provider to carry around the proper tools that allow the waiter to meet any demands of the customer. Service providers may be carrying around several different tools knowing that each will be needed at some point throughout the day. As such, the current separation of the necessary service provider's tools into distinct items impedes a service provider's ability to provide a fluid, efficient dining experience, as today's service providers are currently forced to locate and obtain the necessary implements if they are not carried by the server in his or her apron. Even in cases where service providers do carry the variety of tools on their person or in their apron, they are forced to search, locate, and obtain each tool individually, losing value serving time to this type of fumbling due to the outdated design of kitchen tools.
Therefore, there is still a need for a restaurant service tools to enhance and streamline the business tasks of services providers, such as servers, bartenders, and professional waiters to allow the service provider to achieve a higher volume of clientele seen/served per shift, a higher quotient of productivity during each shift, and thus a higher number of total sales per shift. This feat is currently impeded by the separation of the tools into distinct items.
Simply combining all the tools needed by the service provider is not the solution because this results in a heavy, cumbersome, multi-purpose tool. The tool must be intelligently designed to accommodate the required tools of a particular service provider, and to combine the tools in a manner that minimizes weight and maximizes utility and ergonomics.